


Five Times Chris Reassessed His Relationship with Zach, and One Time He Didn't

by lousy_science



Category: Star Trek RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-30
Updated: 2013-05-30
Packaged: 2017-12-13 11:32:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,778
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/823820
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lousy_science/pseuds/lousy_science
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sequel to More to Hold You With. IDEK 'verse. This means three arms, people.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Five Times Chris Reassessed His Relationship with Zach, and One Time He Didn't

1\. Zach’s back was supple with muscle, like corn fields rippling in the breeze, a swarm of movement whenever he reached out. His shoulder blades rose and sunk like waves. Chris knew that Zach did yoga and free weights, but his ease in his body seemed to be deeply-rooted. He stretches, happy as a cat. Chris loved rubbing this back, getting drunk on the touch, telling Zach that he was just soothing out the cricks from a long day at his writing desk, but his mind tripping away on erotic currents.  
“I want to come over your back.”  
“Fuck, Chris. Yes.”

2.

“Yeouch! Watch the merchandise,”  
Chris instantly reared back. “What? Oh my God Zach, are you OK? What did I do?”  
They had been doing this thing of wrestling each other to bed. After a long day at the keyboard for Zach, and dealing with caffeine junkies for Chris, it was a way to blow off steam and let themselves get stupid and horny. They were both strong guys, and like other times this had become almost like sparring. The pushing and pulling was broken up by quick vicious kisses and superfluous groping. Chris had found himself on top for once, and had been climbing over Zach while trying to push his torso up the mattress more, and his knee had gone – fuck, it had landed with his full weight straight into Zach’s inner arm joint.  
“Chris, it was nothing, I’m fine,”  
“No, wait, are you – did you feel anything snap?”  
He wanted to lean in and soothe the abused skin, but held off. What if he’d broken something? Broken Zach? Chris sat back on his haunches, avoided all three of Zach’s outstretched arms.  
“Pine, you’ve gone completely white. Don’t faint on me.”  
“I’m not, it’s just that, I don’t want to, um,”  
“Damage me? This is a mood killer, right here.”  
Chris huffed at the pissy tone in Zach’s voice while climbed off of the bed with his back to Zach. He knew he was being unreasonable, but his worry had twisted in to being angry at himself at ruining everything. The nagging voice in his head that of course he was going to ruin this eventually was getting louder.  
“Come here. We’re due to have the arm talk.”  
Chris spun back, pissed off that much more. “What arm talk, Zach? Because, gee, I had kinda noticed that it’s - that you -”  
“You can’t even say it. I’m not angry, I just want you back on the bed with me. It won’t be scary, I promise. Here, good, OK. Touch it, at the joint. Carefully, ‘cause it’s gonna bruise. Don’t make a face like you need to don a hair shirt. I’m the only person who gets to treat you roughly. It’s gonna bruise, and you’re gonna rub arnica cream on it for me, and bring me in some of those pecan cookies from work.”  
“Those have palm oil in them.”  
“I don’t care if they have crack in them. Feel the joint? Use your thumb, now compare it to my upper joint. Uh-huh. Smaller, see? I have less rotation here.”  
Zach demonstrated, opening his inner arm out and stretching it. “The humerus is shortened, but the radius and ulna almost identical to the other ones. Out of every hundred cases of extra jointed limbs, only around five have the degree of functionality I enjoy. I’m more than just an anomaly, you know, I’m a special anomaly. Apparently my case is required reading in med school. You should ask Karl.”  
“If it’s required reading, he won’t have done it.”  
“The skin around the joint, especially here-”  
Zach drew Chris’s fingers to one of his favourite places, the fold between the two arms. “It’s really sensitive. I love it when you touch me there. And my hip, here, where I had a removal. A mass of muscle and fat. When I was four. There’s a scar. Touch it, please. I still feel ghosting sometimes.”  
“Why did your parents decide that?”  
“The removal? Medical necessity, there were cysts, the skin was very thin and broke easily. There’s a problem with blood clots, that’s why I take aspirin and can’t drink before ten in the morning, which is a disadvantage that never gets mentioned in talk of disability rights, goddamn it.  
“You know why I got my tat? I was so tired of my body being touched and shared with doctors, of being legislated, having court cases fought over it, of being defined by it, I wanted to mark it as mine. Your hands on me - when we’re doing what we do, Chris, I love it, because it’s about us and none of those other things.  
“When you treat me like I’m breakable, it’s like what they did,”  
“Zach. I’m sorry.”  
“Don’t be sorry. I don’t like you sorry, I’ve decided. I like you here,”  
Zach tugged Chris down so that their bodies were flush. Chris stroked the inked symbol on Zach’s shoulder with reverence. He could feel himself harden again with the renewed friction. His hands got picked up and moved back over Zach’s torso, while one palm cupped his chin. “And here.”  
Chris grabbed him back tight enough to bruise and lunged in for a deep kiss.

3.

“Sleepover, again, Pine? Want the number of a moving van?”  
“Go fuck yourself, Karl. Gently and sensually.”  
Chris had been in bed at his apartment, having gotten back from Zach’s early and deciding on a little pre-shift nap. Karl was dead to the world on the couch when he’d staggered in, so – “How did you know?”  
“You’re wearing one of your boyfriend’s shirts.”  
“Hmm?”  
Chris looked down, and sure enough, the white v-neck had an extra arm hole. It was currently turned in, and the tee was loose enough for him not to have noticed. He took a moment to feel all warm and fuzzy, then squashed that feeling like a bug. Not in front of the New Zealanders, Chris.  
“Happens. Side effect of incredibly hot sex.”

They hadn’t even gotten to the bed, been rolling around on the wooden floor semi-clothed when Zach had pinned him down and straddled Chris, pushed up the shirt he was wearing and come all over Chris’s chest. Chris had almost given himself a concussion, writhing around under Zach’s hands until he finally deigned to touch Chris’s dick, leaving them both covered in sweat and semen and incipient bruises.  
“You’re working a double today, think you’ll make it?”  
Chris flipped him off in lieu of a reply and went to find some clean socks. Karl called out to his back, “Just let me know where you’re registering, sweetheart, so I can get you something nice in Zach’s favourite china pattern.”

4.

Chris fixed himself a drink from the fancy-pants cabinet and sat down on the couch, before thinking that he’d prefer the porch, before settling for some nervous pacing across the room. He’d invited Zach to a poetry reading, and as Karl pointed out he was now qualified for a beret and hand-rolled cigarette in pretentious dickhead bingo. “You’re taking him to a poetry reading? Then what, vegan buffet at the local co-op before tantric sex?”

Thing was, Zach would probably dig that. Maybe not the tantric bit, given that their fucking was usually rough and quick and dirty and full of laughing, which surprised Chris every time and thrilled him. He still had the remains of a black eye after being tossed off the bed the other week, which led to many Fight Club jokes from Karl and a concerned talk from Zoe (“Zo, seriously, we were just having fun and I lost my balance, Zach spent ages holding an ice pack to my face and giving me foot rubs to make up for it.”)  
As well as foot rubs, and a terrific blow job, there had been a million apologies. “Quinto, cut it out, I’ve never had a black eye before and it’s making me feel quite butch, to be honest.”  
“If you were really butch, you wouldn’t say ‘quite’. Though you do look like a hardscrabble depression-era boxer, someone out of Damon Runyon. It’s hot. But I still feel like a-”  
“No goodnik louse?”  
“That’s your Runyon speak?”  
“Bet your do-re-mi it is.”

He settled back down on the couch next to the bookcase. This was the first date-type thing they’d gone on that Chris had instigated. If they weren’t wrestling each other and swapping back rubs and hand jobs after long working days, the few times they’d managed to go out together it had been Zach’s ideas. All nature stuff. Hiking trails, a tree-planting day at the local park, a butterfly enclosure – Chris had rolled his eyes at the sound of it, but he had to admit that one was totally badass. Even the moths were cool. It was all cool, he didn’t gravitate to the great outdoors much as a rule, but he liked being outside, stretching his legs, soaking up whatever vitamin the sun provided, and knowing that he could turn to Zach and ask him what vitamin that was.  
“D. Promotes calcium absorption, gives you cute freckles.”  
“The hell I have freckles.”  
“On your arms. Here,”  
Zach drew a sinuous line down Chris’s forearm. “Best to keep an eye on them, melanomas are not cute, not that you’re at high risk spending twenty-three hours indoors.”  
Chris had slung his arm around him. “I do like it when you talk science-y. Even if it’s skin cancer, you silver-tongued bastard.”

A week later, Zach was on the phone to his agent and Chris was here, fretting on the couch. It was stupid, he knew, but he wanted Zach to like this. There was something else, too, and Chris knew he could wriggle it out of his brain if he agitated it enough. Moving to the bookcase, he touched the spines of the books. There were a lot, and Zach’s tastes were catholic. He’d told Chris he’d left his sewing machine behind to pack extra books when he moved out of Colorado.  
“A sewing machine?”  
“You thought American Apparel did a line of three-armed garments?”  
“Well, they do assless tights, seems that they provide for a fairly wide demographic.”

Chris’s finger stopped. He’d been flicking over plays, he realised, and started dragging them out. Eugene O’Neill, Tennessee Williams, Tracy Letts. Some annotated some with ticket stubs of performances in them.

That was it, that was what Chris had half-noticed that had bugged him. Zach’s kitchen wall had a poster up from a recent production of a Victor Lodato play. He generally had listing magazines around, with pen circles around movie times and events. But he’d never mentioned them to Chris. Never suggested they meet in town to catch a screening or a performance.

Suddenly he got it, that Zach had been taking him to free stuff for their dates. Because they never discussed money, but Zach somehow ended up feeding Chris most of the time, and had never put him in the position of having to say no to anything because of his budget.  
Zach walked into the room, apologising for the long phone call, and Chris turned, freshly happy to see him. Resolving, as they walked out to the car, that he was buying Zach the most expensive drink at the bar tonight, as a reward for being such a considerate son of a bitch.

5.

Chris got in and slammed Zach’s door, apologising when he looked up. “Shitty day. Très shitty. How are you?”  
“Fine, kid. Come on,”  
Zach gathered him into one of those bone-melting hugs. Chris’s irritation shrunk to an itch in his spine. They’d had plans for tonight, pasta and a box set of David Attenborough DVDs, it should’ve kept Chris on an even keel. But he’d had one too many butthole frat boy customers, one who made a crack to his buddies about never having a job with a name badge, because he had some dignity, or some shit like that.  
Zach moved away enough to kiss Chris on the forehead. “Want to talk it out or drown it?”  
Chris was tempted to let Zach pull him out of this, knowing that he would, using his voice and his touch and enough suddenness and strength that Chris would have to push back, engage and lose himself in the movement of two of them. But he’d been thinking about bring this up with Zach. About his shit. “Can we talk it out? Or, rather, can I talk to you? I’ve been thinking, I know a bit more about you than you know about me, and I want to - try and balance that.”  
“You do play your cards close to your chest, but I don’t want to push you - if you want to talk, we can talk, I’m here.”  
“Sit down, then. Over there.”  
Zach half-smiled. “I don’t get to touch you? It’s been a week.”  
“I need to concentrate.”  
Before letting him go, Chris placed a kiss on Zach’s palm.  
“Last year, my life kind of collapsed. AKA the great Why Chris Is a Loser Drop-out story.”  
“Don’t, Chris. Don’t say that kind of stuff. If you want to talk about yourself like that, you’re in the market for another audience.”  
Chris smiled, well aware of Zach’s low tolerance for self-pity. He focussed on a knothole in the floor in front of him.  
“My girlfriend, Shana, her Dad was dying. Throat cancer, nasty fucking thing. She was falling apart, they had never really got on and now he was being given a matter of weeks.”

Chris sighed. It seemed like something that had happened to someone else, decades ago, not something that was his life just twelve months past.  
“She gave up on classes, obviously, got compassionate leave or whatever it’s called - I filled the forms in for her and I still don’t know. I moved in with her, just to keep her eating, try to convince her to sleep, hold her. She cried a lot, eventually me and her friends convinced her to get some pills for it, see someone on campus. As for my school work - you can imagine. Shana decided to book a flight to Chicago, where her parents were, and asked me to come with her. For an indefinite amount of time. There would eventually be the funeral and all that shit to deal with, too.  
“I said I would. We had this conversation at about two in the morning. It was coming up for finals, and there was no way - I wasn’t prepared at all, and I couldn’t get any leeway from the faculty. Admittedly, it didn’t help my cause by barging in to the head of department’s office and yelling at him that he was an unsympathetic ass. I called my folks, needing money, but mainly needing to talk. You’ve gotta understand, Zach, it all happened so quickly. Shana and I, we’d been dating maybe three months. My parents had never met her, and now I’m on the phone telling them I was giving up my semester to go to Chicago with her.”

Zach held Chris’s gaze. His eyes were huge, and he was wearing that brown sweater Chris secretly loved and he had this impulse to get up, cross the floor and climb into his arms. Instead, he took a breath, surprised how this part still wound him up.  
“My family, we’re not wealthy, not poor exactly but - my college money, that didn’t come easily, even with my partial scholarship. And they never said a thing about me doing an arts degree. But money is a thing in our family, you don’t waste it, education the same, I guess. They drummed that in to me, the importance of working hard and not taking things for granted. I must’ve sounded a wreck on the phone. My Mom, she sounded scared - I’ll never forgive myself for making her sound like that-”

His voice broke. Zach made a move to get up, and Chris waved him down. Saying please with his eyes. He turned to look out the window at the swaying trees for a while. He wanted Zach to hear this, and he sure as hell didn’t want to drag it out.

“We had a fight, Dad and Mom on one end, me on the other. Afterwards, I don’t even know quite what happened, lost a few hours. Got drunk, not massively but I was so worked up and exhausted and stressed, it was fuel to the fire. Next thing I remember, I stormed in to Shana’s place, the lights were off in the kitchen. I kind of came in all guns blazing, threw my jacket across the room, went to open the fridge - God knows why, we never had any food in there - and this chair got in my way, so I applied classic drunk person’s logic to it and flung it into the corner. It wasn’t such a big kitchen, but it was dark. And there was this awful noise - a cat screaming, Shana’s roommate’s cat, Fritz, I either scared him or actually hit him, it was a scary as fuck sound. Then there was another noise, from the living room.  
“Shana, weeping, but also shivering - I could hear her teeth rattling, I can’t really believe that, but that’s what I remember. I went in to comfort her, and she was hunched up in this dark room, and Zach, when she saw me she flinched. She was terrified of me.”

Chris twisted his hands together.  
“I didn’t know. She never told me, her Dad had been a vicious drunk. Coming home like that, in her current state - I probably set off some post-traumatic-stress or something. Everything fell apart, after I thought it was already ruined, it got worse. We split up, more or less the next day when I drove her to the airport. I couldn’t bring myself to talk to a single academic advisor, to anyone but Karl. He took me in, gave me his crappy couch and much, much alcohol. It was so bad, I didn’t answer my parent’s messages. Then one day they showed up - flew in to track my sorry ass down. We had the big tearful reunion, said sorry, made our peace.  
“I started working full time, picked up as much work as possible. The more back-breaking, the better. Settled down a bit, stayed at Karl’s when his roommate left to find himself in Bolivia. That’s it, really. I could go back, get my degree, people from the English department reached out - many of them were thrilled I told the Head to fuck off, at least - but when I picture myself going through the loan process again, the paperwork, handing over more money - I want to vomit. Still.”

He began rubbing his tummy, only stopping once he noticed what he was doing. This time he didn’t stop Zach from moving over to the spindly wooden chair and encircling him. It was ridiculous, the two of tottering on the edge of falling over, half-sitting together and half-standing. Then Zach rose, and Chris went with him, happy to fall like leaves together on the bed, to scatter themselves until there was nothing of them but skin and bone and heat.

1.

They were walking at the edge of the parkway as the afternoon moving into evening. Zach was bubbling over with literary gossip from his trip to see his publisher. They only had two hours before Chris’s night shift at the warehouse, so they were doing the walk that wound around the industrial park where it met the greenbelt, crossed by a strip of dingy taverns and liquor stores at the blunt end of the retail sector. Chris made some joke about Norman Mailer’s eyebrows, which made Zach laugh more than it should. They came together for a kiss naturally as the waves meet the shore.  
“Fuckin’ fags.”  
Chris spun around and saw some guy hanging out of his Jeep, his face like an overstuffed ham sandwich. He spent the next few seconds trying to judge whether the dude was alone, or if he had a buddy who would walk over from the bar door with a broken bottle.  
“Fuck these, asshole!”  
Zach’s tone was positively jovial. Three middle fingers had sprung out to face the Jeep, whose driver blanched and hastily pulled out of the parking lot.  
Chris let go of the breath he’d been holding, and felt Zach’s arms pull him back in. “Don’t worry, stretch, anyone that homophobic is always going to be totally freaked out by an actual monster.”  
Chris laughed, all the tension gone in a moment. “Put those hands where I can’t see them, already.”

*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*

  
It wasn’t a real weekend. It comprised the last Tuesday and Wednesday of the month, but as far as Chris and Zach were concerned, it was the best holiday of the season. Chris had finagled his schedule so that he had from 4pm Monday to 8.30am Friday off work, and Zach had to submit his revised manuscript to one of his readers by Monday night, and had promised that he wouldn’t touch it until it was back.  
Which didn’t stop him from picking away at his keyboard up until 11.10 Monday night. Chris got it, set himself down on the couch with a John Irving novel and snuck looks at Zach’s worried face. He would rub his jaw while typing with one hand and playing with a USB stick in the other. Chris liked the rare glimpses he got of Zach working. He’d noticed that outside of his home, Zach mainly used his outer arms, only letting his full ambidextrous skills out when he was here. He’d asked about it, and Zach looked a little sheepish and said it was a habit he’d picked up as a child and never shook.

“I’m doing it! One keystroke, here we go. The fucker has taken forever to upload, c’mon baby, do it for me.”  
Chris shook himself out of a light doze. “Let that bad boy go forth and blow minds.”  
“My book is feminine in character, I’m sure. However, if you’re in the mood for mind-blowing,”  
Zach was shutting down the computer and walking towards him, waggling his eyebrows. But stifling a yawn at the same time.  
“You know, we have two whole days. How about we go to bed and sleep.”  
“Really?”  
“As long as I have responsibility for waking you up.”

It was weird, going to bed to sleep, but Chris was all happy inside at the idea. He wanted to savour all this Zach-ness he was getting, not dilute it with a rushed fumble while he was tired and his boyfriend was cross-eyed with too much typing. They sunk under the covers, coming together worldessly. Chris rested his head on the left side of Zach's chest and let his arm slip between Zach's upper and lower arms. He could feel the calmness radiating off the body beneath, and let it lull him into sleep. 

There was heat, so much heat, and pressure. Chris was groggily aware of his legs being gently repositioned. He opened his eyes to fresh sunlight and a head of sleep-ruffled hair bobbing purposefully over his hip. “Gnnah.”  
Zach licked along his hip flexor. “Mornin’,”  
One hand was stroking Chris’s inner thigh, another poised at the base of his dick, while another curled around the flesh of his ass. “Mmmf. Zach, we had an agreement,”  
Fingers rolling his balls. God, he was a goner for that. He arched his back and groaned when Zach mouthed over one, slowly pulling it into his mouth.Then he felt warm breath coast over him. “I was up first. You can get tomorrow. Plus, you looked so delicious.”

Those soft lips moved back to his sac. Chris gibbered in response. He could feel the smooth heel of the lube bottle tucked under his thigh, then Zach moved down and pushed both his legs up. Stopping to kiss over Chris’s dick, he worked a finger down over his taint. This was different to how it usually was, this was Zach slow, thorough, Chris feeling the full force of his attention on him. It seemed to affect him on an atomic level, he felt lightheaded and buzzing. But that could be the amazing rim job he was getting.  
“Good, Christ, Zach, never, uh, never stop fucking me,”

Chris could feel the smile, the little love bite on the tender flesh of his ass, before Zach returned to the job with even more force. They were both loud, Chris using one of his hands to keep his right leg up, the other entangled with one of Zach’s. One of those fingers entered alongside his tongue, and Chris could not be held responsible for yelling the roof down. He’s sweating all over as Zach uses a second finger, taking his own sweet time.

Chris has always loved those hands. Being held, front and back, stroked, pinched, soothed and fucked by them all at once is overwhelming. It’s his favourite sensation to pull up in his memory when he needs to recall what it’s like, this quicksilver rush of being loved by Zach.

Three of them inside him now, scissoring and stroking. Zach pulls himself up, head on Chris’s solar plexus, his eyes full of focus but his mouth slack with what Chris has to assume is wonder. They look at each other.  
“Breathe for me, baby.”  
Chris hadn’t forgotten to, he’d just misplaced the ability for a while there. Zach was peppering his stomach with kisses while twisting those fingers resolutely. Only during sex does he call Chris “baby”, and when he did it Chris couldn’t help but melt into him a little more.

They took some time to rearrange themselves better, Zach up on his knees, a Doric column with Chris’s ankles hooked over his shoulders. He bent down to move a pillow under Chris, then swung fully over him. One slick finger teased in and out of Chris’s rim. Zach looked like he was going to say something, then he closed his eyes and kissed Chris. This was a slow, seductive kiss, not rushed like Chris’s jumped up heartbeat, this kiss was an anchor. A lover’s kiss. They chased each other’s lips, then Zach lifted up. “Chris. I’m so lucky.”  
“Zach, please- _ohhhh_!”

Zach had pushed in. He took a long look at Chris to determine if he was alright, then began to move. Bending Chris in on himself, he thrusted steadily, opening him up. Chris felt wanton and claimed. His dick was rock hard, slapping against his chest, but the rest of him felt liquid, like he would spill to the floor without Zach’s support. He reached for Zach for the stability, moving his hands to his back and encouraging him on.

A hand reached down to move over Chris’s aching cock. Zach changed angle slightly, grazing Chris’s prostate. It was almost too much sensation. He rocked under him, their sweat soaking the sheets. The whole world condensed in to nothing but their bodies around each other. Chris began to come under Zach’s relentless fingers, and Zach screamed at the change in pressure. Chris felt it pulsing over their chests at the same time as his mind floated free. He felt it from his fingertips to his toes, his follicles shook with it. Sinking down, Zach kept fucking, less rhythmic, more desperate. Then he shot, his eyes closing and his face opening with love and awe. Fingers squeezed new bruises into Chris. He summoned the last of his strength to squeeze back.

For a few minutes, Chris didn’t know which limb was his. He was trying to get air into his lungs, which were trapped under a fucked-out Quinto. Not that he was complaining about the warm weight on his chest and legs. He moved a hand to brush through that silky black hair. “Thank you.”  
“…you’re welcome. God. That was heaven.”  
“Not bad at all.”  
A pinch. “Not _bad_? You came like a goddamn rocket.”  
“Get up here and say that to my face.”  
Chris smiled broadly as Zach awkwardly pulled himself out, and moved around to prop himself up by an arm next to him. Their legs were still entwined, fingers somehow finding each other again on Chris’s striped stomach. He wanted to kiss, to retain the glow a little longer. Zach looked thoughtful, and hesitated as Chris pulled his face in.  
“What is it?”  
“You. Chris. It’s just you. Being better than everything.”  
And Zach smiled as he met Chris’s lips.

 


End file.
